HEIN COOPER

Meeting the love of your life is a transformative experience. This life-changing feeling — and all of the changes that come with it — is what Australian indie-pop singer-songwriter Hein Cooper explores on his forthcoming EP Turbulent Heart (out August 13 via Nettwerk Records).

 

Recording the EP with producer Jarryd Shuker in Montreal, where Cooper also met his wife, the multi-instrumentalist has reached a place where he's ready to share every aspect of his being with another person. By doing that, he's able to be more purposeful and intentional in his everyday life. By being true to someone else, he can be more faithful to himself. 

 

"All of a sudden, I found myself in a position where I was like, 'Oh, I can't be weak anymore. Because now I'm living so close to someone who I love," Cooper says. "I can't just ignore all of my flaws to keep up this idea in my mind of what I have to be.”

 

Immense change has been at the forefront of Cooper's life for a minute now. Living in the French-Canadian city for three years, Cooper and his partner (also Australian) moved back to his hometown, where he works on his brother's organic farm. Cooper also embraced new professional opportunities, teaming with a new label and management to back his latest release.

  

In addition to themes around commitment, Cooper's love of classic literature shows up again and again, with references to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in songs like "Higher" and "Turbulent Heart," respectively. 

 

On the vibrant "Higher," Cooper writes about how love has changed his perspective on the world and himself while juxtaposing that feeling with what Huxley's characters spend their time doing in Brave New World: numbing out real feelings. "Everybody's so anti-pain and sadness of any kind, even though those are the things that lead you towards a bigger kind of awareness and happiness," he says. "It's all about going through those painful things in life and holding on to the most real love that you have. That thing that truly is going to take you higher by holding onto it."

  

On the jubilant, dance-pop track "Turbulent Heart," Cooper again tries to contend with meeting the love of his life, singing, "you're like Aretha Franklin — you've got more soul than I know what to do with," while acknowledging the realities of life ("We got places to go, we got people to be, there'll be chaos for sure").